I’ll Never Be Good at Running, but I’m Sticking to It

When I tell people I’ve never run a marathon, they look at me like they would a nonflowering rosebush. Doesn’t a nine-year running habit ultimately build to a 26.2-mile crescendo? Don’t runners rush to that crescendo with the same wall-eyed enchantment of children to wild-cherry-flavored anything? And aren’t these marathoners sinewy, driven, wind-blown, and ageless? The answer is yes, and they do, and they are. The good ones, anyway. The ones who run long and fast and all the time.

But that’s not me. When I first started running, I imagined I would improve, rapidly. I never thought I would be particularly fast, but perhaps that I could conquer long distances, even complete a few ultramarathons—that the logical progression from doing a single mile was to go for 50, or a hundred. This made sense in the way most things make sense when you don’t fully understand them. I thought I could run a hundred miles before I understood how hard it would be to run one.

Make those miles a little easier with these training tips:

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I am an ordinary runner. I was ordinary from the moment I began, meaning, probably a lot like you. I didn’t start out as a 300-pounder, I never lost a limb and ran through it, I’m not a cancer survivor, I was never in jail, never homeless, never an addict, not running to compensate for a smoking habit, gambling problem, secret girlfriend, or any other dramatic deficit. I’ll never quit, but I have to talk myself into getting out every time. I don’t live to run, I run to live. My greatest sin is that I’m average.

I’ve reckoned with the fact that another nine years of running won’t make my times improve, that I’ll surely be quite a bit slower than I am today. Yet I have a hard time accepting the nearly equal likelihood that a lifetime of ordinary running won’t eventually lead to a single, colossal feat—that I won’t wake up one day and run an ultra or be one of those reptilian-tough old guys with my shirt off, belly sunken, eyes flashing from a sun-cracked face, killing it through the desert, one freaky padded step at a time. I could be one day. But only in the sense that I could also one day have lunch with Cher. Just because it’s not impossible doesn’t mean it’s ever gonna happen. So if I’m not getting faster and I’ll never run an ultra, the fair question is: What’s the point?

My son Willem began high school this year. To start off on the right foot, I signed him up for cross country, the only fall sport he might have a shot at. When I told him we were going to the local running store to buy shoes, he said, “Dad. I’m not a runner.” As a muscular, six-foot-two 14-year-old, he was the lead scorer in his previous basketball and lacrosse seasons. He is used to smashing to the top of whatever sport he applies himself to—something he would not be able to do in cross-country races against angular opponents nearly half his weight.

“I’m not gonna be any good at this,” he said as we drove home from the running store, the orange Nike box shifting on his lap.

“That’s probably true,” I said. “It’s good you’re doing it, all the same.”

“Why is it good?” he said. “I mean, what is it you want me to learn about not being the best at something?”

His logic is likely my fault. I had always told him to do his best in everything. Repeatedly telling your kid to do his best might eventually start to morph in their mind. Soon, doing their best leads to the expectation that he has to be the best. “Shoot for the stars and if you miss, you’ll land on the moon,” I’d always told him and his brothers. As if the moon would be a nice place to live.

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“Kid, if you only do the things you’re the best at, you’ll never do much. You won’t see much, you won’t know much, you won’t laugh much. Doing, seeing, knowing, laughing—these are the things that make a life. If you only aim to be the best, you may one day succeed in that, but you will likely have failed at everything else.”

I wish I’d said that. Instead, I looked over and told him it was a good question—one I’d like him to give me the answer to after he crossed the finish line of his first race.

On my weekend run, I posed the question to my friend Quin, a Yale graduate who is often the best at whatever he does. Unsurprisingly, he gave, well, the best answer. He laughed and shot a fist in the air as we charged forward.

“For resilience!” he said. “Humility! Man, so you can rise from the ashes! To cultivate empathy! Curiosity! Perspective! A sense of humor! I’m just getting started…”

Every run I go on is a rise from the ashes. And it’s almost always—deep down and in a dark kind of way—hilarious. Imagine: a man alone on a country road he’s run hundreds of times, at the completion of his lousy little three-mile run, turning into the driveway and throwing his arms into the air as if, like one of those extraordinary runners we’ve all read about, he’s just completed a trek across the entire country.

When Willem eventually came crashing over his first finish line, his lips nearly white with pain, he stumbled over, grabbed my shoulders for support, and hung his head. “That was horrible,” he said. “I’m so bad at this.” Then, panting, he looked up at me and said, “Why are you laughing?”

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Marc Parent is the author of four books and a frequent contributor to Runner’s World. Follow him on Twitter @realmarcparent.

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